CO2 rise threatens Britain's hope of meeting Kyoto target

Britain is burning so much oil, gas and coal it may miss its international target to reduce global warming gases, according to government figures which show carbon dioxide emissions rising by 2.5% in the first six months of this year.

The figures from the Department of Trade and Industry, analysed by Friends of the Earth, show that emissions of the main greenhouse gas have risen by 5.5% since 1997, when they should be reducing by 1% a year.

The government is obliged by the global Kyoto agreement to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases to 12.5% below 1990 levels during the 2008-12 period.

It was so confident of meeting this target that it set an ambitious domestic target of a 20% cut in 1997. That is now widely accepted as a near impossibility.

The prospect of Britain missing the lower Kyoto target will embarrass Tony Blair, who has taken a diplomatic lead on global warming and is in Beijing today for EU bilateral summits with India and China, where climate change is due to be discussed.

"Britain's credibility as a leader on climate change is now in serious danger and urgent steps must be taken," said Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth.

Yesterday the government said that it still considered itself on target to meet its Kyoto obligations. "But there is no complacency. We are reviewing our climate change programme to meet our ambitious target of 20% cuts by 2010 and will report later this year", said an environment department spokesman.

One of the reasons Britain took the international lead on global warming was because its carbon gases fell dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s with the closure of coal mines and the wider use of gas. Much of the emissions rise is attributed to a rise in transport.